160 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
pessimistic in his reading of economic tendencies before the War, he 
will be regarded as unquestionably right in calling attention again to 
the importance of the problem of population. ‘ 
Nothing that I have said discredits the fundamental principle of 
Malthus, reinforced as it can be by the teachings of modern science. The 
idea that mankind, while reducing indefinitely the risks to human life, 
can, without disaster, use to the full a power of reproduction adapted to 
the perils of savage or prehuman days, can control death by art and 
leave births to Nature, is biologically absurd. The rapid cumulative 
increase following on any practical application of this idea would within 
measurable time make civilisation impossible in this or any other planet. 
In fact, this idea is no more a fundamental part of human thought 
than is the doctrine of laissez faire in economics, which has been its 
contemporary, alike in dominance and in decay. Sociology and history 
show that man has hardly ever acted on this idea; at nearly all stages 
of his development he has, directly or indirectly, limited the number of 
his descendants.*® Vital statistics show that the European races, after 
a phase of headlong increase, are returning to restriction. The revolu- 
tionary fall of fertility among these races within the past fifty years, 
while it has some mysterious features, is due in the main to practices 
as deliberate as infanticide. The questions now facing us are how far the 
fall will go; whether it will bring about a stationary white population 
after or long before the white man’s world is full; how the varying inci- 
dence of restriction among different social classes or creeds will affect 
the stock; how far the unequal adoption of birth control by different 
races will leave one race at the mercy of another’s growing numbers, 
or drive it to armaments and perpetual aggression in self-defence. 
To answer these questions is beyond my scope, as it is beside my 
purpose to pass judgment on the practices from which they spring. 
The purpose of my paper is rather to give reasons for suspending 
judgment till we know more. The authority of economic science cannot 
be invoked for the intensification of these practices as a cure for our 
present troubles. But behind these troubles the problem of numbers waits 
—the last inexorable riddle for mankind. To multiply the nation and not 
increase the joy is the most dismal end that can be set for human 
striving. If we desire another end than that, we should not burk dis- 
cussion of the means. However the matter be judged, there is full 
time for inquiry, before fecundity destroys us, but inquiry and frank 
discussion there must be. Two inquiries in particular it seems well to 
suggest at once. 
The first is an investigation into the potential agricultural resources 
of the world. There has been more than one elaborate examination of 
coal supplies; we have estimates of the total stock of coal down to 
various depths in Britain and Germany, in America, China, and else- 
where; we can form some impression of how long at given rates of 
consumption each of those stocks will last; we know that ‘ exhaustion ’ 
is not an issue for this generation or many generations to come. There 
has been no corresponding study of agricultural resources; there 1s not 
16 See The Problem of Population, by A. M. Carr-Saunders, 
